- Am I the only one who, when it comes to polls, feels
like he's on LSD? Take Bush's "approval rating" ...please.
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- Despite a recession, despite undefined "war"
that is slowly becoming a Vietnam-like quagmire, despite a USA Patriot
Act that is the first step to a Gestapo takeover, despite a bloated defense
budget at a time when all other aspects of the national budget are strip-mined,
despite revelations that every member of his Cabinet with the exception
of Colin Powell is a corrupt, lying corporate lapdog, Bush's "approval
ratings" are consistently high.
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- Surely, the pollsters are not talking to any black people
or any poor people or any people who can't afford health insurance or prescription
medicine. Surely, anyone who has seen their stock money disappear into
the pockets of Bush's CEO pals, anyone with a 401 (K) plan, anyone who
cares about the environment, anyone who is pro-choice, anyone against war
and capital punishment is not going to "approve" of the president's
job. Do polls ever indicate how many people hang up in the face of the
pollster who calls? (Answer: No). Perhaps an interesting and surely more
telling poll would be one that gives a political snapshot of people most
likely to stay on the line when a pollster calls.
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- The question begged by Bush's barely scathed approval
ratings is this: Who are these blocs of people sitting beside their TVs,
telephones and computer terminals voting en masse at the first signal from
their fellow travelers? More simply: Have you ever known anyone contacted
by a political pollster? Me neither. I've known plenty of people who've
been called for jury duty. I've even met a couple people who've won lottery
payouts and casino jackpots. But I've never met anyone who has been polled.
Ever. Speaking of specious polls, check out the one conducted by Fox News
called "Bush Confronts Corporate Cheats," (thanks to Eric at
Hamster.com). By its title alone, it is tilted in Bush's favor. As most
Wall Street pundits, including conservative Lou Dobbs, insisted after Bush's
speech, his meaningless gesture did not confront tax cheats at all, but
undermined desperately needed reform. And yet, here's Fox's poll question.
"Do you approve of the president's plan to crack down on corporate
cheats?" They are already taking it as fact that the plan will "crack
down" (it won't), and they've worded the question so that to answer
"No" means you're in favor of corporate cheats. It is the equivalent
of asking -- from the opposite political perspective: "Would you vote
for Bush today if you knew that, despite having enough intelligence to
prevent it, he would allow a terrorist attacks to occur on American soil,
killing 3,000 American civilians?"
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- Naturally, Fox's poll results were 89 percent "Yes,"
6 percent "No." A recent Advocate poll, on the other hand, found
that viewers who depend on Fox for their news are either conservative (89
percent) or insane (6 percent). As Harry O'Neill, veteran pollster with
Roper Starch Worldwide, has said, "Every poll is commissioned for
a reason, either to gather information or to advance a cause or point of
view. Instant polls include only viewers, not the whole public. In addition,
they include only those viewers who can be reached quickly, since there
is no time for callbacks. The result is a biased, unreliable sample. And
polls released on a particular issue or piece of pending legislation may
be intended to sway public opinion or to legitimate a company's point of
view."
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- Here's another example, found on the religious site,
Ecclesiastic Commonwealth Community (www.ecclesia.org). Their poll question
was, "More than six months has passed since the 9-11 disaster. Whom
do you honestly believe actually caused and was the major force behind
the destruction of the World Trade Center?" After 5,682 votes, the
results broke down as: Osama bin Laden (4.4 percent) 250 votes; American
militias (0.3 percent) 18; White House (21.9 percent) 1243; Pentagon (1.1
percent) 65; The Taliban and al-Qaida (18.2 percent) 1035 votes; Sadaam
Hussein (Iraq) (3.9 percent) 224; New World Order (48.0 percent) 2728;
other (2.1 percent) 119. And yet, two hours later, the results took a dramatic
turn. All of the categories were up anywhere from 11 percent to 34 percent,
but the "Taliban/al-Qaida" category zoomed 251 percent, garnering
2,600 votes. When alerted of this surge, the site discovered that the poll
had been "hacked" via "an AOL server near Langley, Virginia.
He got in by using a Java script we haven't seen before."
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- If the CIA is hacking a tiny religious site to skew poll
results the way they want, what sort of hacking is going on with the ubiquitous
polls that are trumpeted nightly on the mainstream, corporate, status quo
"news" networks?
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